Art As Leadership with Raphy Mendoza

What if your art isn’t just output—but leadership? We sit down with Raphy, an artist and coach, to reframe creativity as a public act of meaning-making and community-building. From the first minutes, we push past “paintings on walls” into the deeper work of identity: who you are, what you stand for, and how a brand becomes magnetic when it’s built from the inside out. That shift changes everything—your confidence, your pricing, your audience, and the spaces you choose to create online and, crucially, offline.

Raphy brings stories that land. She shares a sweeping exhibition of nearly a thousand paintings made in under a year, each capturing an “energetic signature”—the bark of a dog, the turn of a season, a memory surfacing in stillness. We talk about intentional pricing, accessibility, and why her next collection pares down to thirteen large works at premium rates to honor depth and scope. We also dive into the rising tide of AI. If art is treated as decor, it’s replaceable. If art is leadership, ritual, and shared presence, it becomes irreplaceable. That’s why we’re bullish on local gatherings, third spaces, and exhibitions that can only exist because a human is holding the room.

For creators feeling stuck, Raphy offers a powerful 30-day series of journaling prompts to locate energy leaks and identity blocks—real work that reignites flow and clarity. The closing advice is simple and strong: know who you are, accept it fully, and gather people who truly get you. Whether you paint, write, compose, design, or guide immersive retreats in the woods, your practice can become a vessel for values, connection, and change. Press play to rethink your role in a future shaped by both matter and mystery, and leave with practical steps to build a brand that people feel—and follow.

If this conversation resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs a creative nudge, and leave a review so more artists can find their people.

Chapters

• 0:02 Meet Rafi: Artist and Guide
• 0:41 Artists As Leaders of Consciousness
• 3:41 Art, Hope, and Human Resilience
• 5:11 Redefining What Counts As Art
• 8:19 Coaching As The Art of Conversation
• 10:46 Traditional Selling Without Gatekeepers
• 16:32 A Thousand Paintings, One Intention
• 20:52 Pricing, Intention, and Access
• 22:31 Offline Community in an AI Age
• 27:24 Beyond Decor: Brand, Values, Service
• 31:35 Quantum Talk, Lived Experience

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:02

Hello there and welcome back to the next episode of Overcome Yourself the Podcast. As you can know, my name is Nicole, and I'm so excited to be here today with Rafi. Now, Rafi is my friend from across the pond, and I'm so excited to have her here today. She is an artist and she helps other artists make money with their art. Woo! That is so important. I love it so much. Um, so Rafi, take it away. Please introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about who you are and who you help.

SPEAKER_00: 0:34

Yeah, thank you very much for that introduction, Nicole. And um, and yeah, so my name is Rafi. Um, I'm an artist, like Nicole said, and I'm also the founder of Coke Rate, where I work with people one-to-one through group programs and through my memberships. And the crux of what I do is all about empowering artists to be seen and loved and underlying, underlying paid for their art. And fundamentally, my commitment is that artists begin to see themselves fully, and that is as leaders in the evolution of human consciousness, which is a pretty big step up from being, you know, an artist hobbyist thing with a cute little hobby alone in a garage somewhere. Not that there's anything wrong with hobbies, it's a really important part of life, particularly for creative self-expression, but we have a very specific role in the fabric of society and the fabric of humanity, and that role hasn't really been valued, not in recent years, not since the industrial revolution. And we are now at the time we are coming into the age of AI, and more than ever, this role in leadership is so much more important. I have a whole last masterclass on that, so I'm not gonna like dive right into it, but that is the fundamental shift that I help people see about themselves because it's from that point where you know you can really start building a powerful personal brand from the inside out that builds a community of people who are so fundamentally aligned with your art and what it stands for, that they're waiting for your next song, your next collection, your next print, your next book to drop so that they can buy it instead of you sort of chasing bits of money around the internet. And you know, and so that happens from the work that we do inside out, from an idea the identity that we have and how we see ourselves. So that's what I do when I talk about branding. Yes, there's strategy, yes, there's marketing, yes, there's sales, all of those things are important, but all of that are basically just bits of a Frankenstein without a skeleton, unless this piece is solid. Um, and you know, so that's how I make people make money with their art. And you know, and there are also artists who have just as important a role, even if they don't want to monetize their art. And, you know, and so I also help those people, those artists, prioritize their art in a life that demands all sorts of things for for their time and from their energy. Um, and it's no different the identity shift that needs to happen for you to carve out that time that you don't seem to have. That still needs to come from you understanding that this creative work is a fundamental piece of your legacy as a human being, and that it gets prioritized because it has a role in this world. So that's the that's who I am.

SPEAKER_01: 3:40

I love that. I love that so much, and art is so important. Um you know, when we see even spaces of of war, of things that are happening where the human spirit is at its lowest, we see art in those places pop up. Art is hope, right? Um, part of my family is from Cuba and art, artists get taken away in the middle of the night. Um, and you know why? Because art is important, you know, um, because artists need to speak out, because that's where hope comes from. And so I think it is it's beautiful that you are helping other people find their inner artists. And I love how you branched it out. We're not just talking about painting on canvases here to be an artist. Um, like you mentioned, books. Um, I'm sure we even talk about digital art, right? Because I um I don't want to say definitely not in front of an artist coach like you, but I sometimes I feel like I can't paint to save my life. Like I whatever is in my head is very hard to translate, you know, when it comes to like trying to paint something or trying to draw an image, but I can get in Canva and I can put together some stuff and make it look real nice, right? And so there's so many different kinds of art and so many different ways that we can express beyond what we just think of, maybe what makes it into a museum.

SPEAKER_00: 5:11

Absolutely, and this is where the piece about you know, to be an artist is to be a leader in consciousness, and a lot of the time I because I'm an artist, I'm a I'm a traditional artist, I paint. Um, and I make and sell my art in the traditional way, but I'm also a coach. And I often get the question, well, which is your primary thing, or you know, what are you primarily a coach or are you primarily an artist? And to me, there's no hierarchy in that space because without art, without my own practice, I would feel so unholed, I couldn't possibly be a useful coach. Or or even if I could pretend to be a useful coach and be effective in some way, there would be such a deep level of integrity missing because part of myself is not being taken care of. And vice versa, if I weren't coaching, I wouldn't feel connected to that depth of humanness, that depth of conversation, that kind of intimacy that you only get when somebody gives you permission to walk alongside their inner world with them, as they do in a coaching conversation. And so without those experiences that I have to have on a daily basis to feel my craving for depth and connection to feel fulfilled, then I wouldn't be able to fulfill my art either. So they come together, and I would go as far as to say as my coaching is the art of conversation. Because fundamentally, creativity is just creating something out of nothing with your consciousness. And so if you're doing that either as a creative entrepreneur or an entrepreneur that's not traditionally in the creative sector, if you are creating something that didn't exist before, if you are pioneering ideas that weren't there before, if you're creating paths for people that weren't there before, then you are creating art. And one of my client one of my clients, he's just joined my program, you the artist. Um, he you know, he doesn't paint, he doesn't create music, he doesn't do any of the tr those things that you're thinking about when you're thinking about art. He runs retreats in the woods, and the kind of like basics of what he does is he takes you into the woods, and you know, there's some like really beautiful spaces that he creates, like bits of kind of like woodland architecture, sheepskin everywhere, and you go through a program in which basically you're in the woods with him and you don't speak to each other. It's a silent retreat in the woods, and that is his art, you know, and the transformations that occur in that space is literally being created out of nothing, the nothingness of just being in the woods, and a transformation so fundamental gets created, and you know, and there's there's not a paintbrush in sight, and yet he is very much 100% definitely an artist. You know, that's probably the closest description there is for him. Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01: 8:13

Yes, yes, it's it's like getting to be in art, it's like living the art, right? Because you're you're in it, like you get to experience the different facets of it, and like you said, it's so beautiful that we have the power to do that, right? Like it's it's it's our duty. Like there was right, like if you think about even even in the story of creation, there was nothing and then there was a universe. Like we are meant to create, we are co-creators, we were given that power because if we have that same power, right? And so I think it's beautiful, and it comes that's where innovation comes from, that's where hope comes from, that's where like all of these beautiful things. Like, I'm just there's so much coming to me right now. Now, you did mention though, I want to kind of swerve a little bit because I I love how basically everything is art to you, and I love thinking of the retreat as art, but you mentioned selling art in a traditional way for those of us who are not artists, we're not in that world. Can you give us like kind of a quick recap of what that means?

SPEAKER_00: 9:26

Yeah, I mean, I'll try to be quick, but you know, so I've been I've been making art in terms of paintings for the longest time. So so no art making isn't a prime primary to coaching, but it did come first because when I was two, there was no such thing as coaching that I knew of. And so, you know, that's something that's been in my life for a really long time. And the way that I've kind of created my exhibitions and the way that I've created the experiences around my art is you won't necessarily know that each exhibition was done by the same artist, so I'm not genre specific in terms of materials, I'm not I'm not material specific, I'm not abstract specific, although lately I'm more and more abstract. But really, the one thread that ties all of my art together is that I explore human consciousness and what that looks like to be both energy and matter, which is what we are as human beings. Like earlier, you Nicole, you were talking about we have the power to create, and we have that power to create, and we have the power to create our very reality because we are sitting in that space between energy being and also material being. And so, my most recent exhibition, I created a thousand paintings or nearly a thousand paintings, it worked out something like 890. Um, and I created all of those pieces in under 11 months, and each one was an energetic signature of all of the things that we can feel and sense but can't touch or see. So maybe that's like my dog barking and it echoing around the house that has a very particular energy. Maybe it's the color of the sky as it's turning from spring to summer or summer to autumn. Maybe it's you know a really kind of like a shocking experience, like if you've witnessed a car accident that has an energetic signature. Maybe it's an old memory that surfaces when you're in a meditative state, or maybe it's just like a feeling that is wanting to be experienced. All of these things have an energetic signature, and so each of these 1000 pieces were an attempt at capturing whatever energetic signature I was experiencing at that moment in time, and you know, and I wanted the exhibition to really be a reminder to human beings that we are both matter and spirits, and and to express that that knowledge and that awareness is the key that unlocks a level of personal fat power and freedom to which we can literally create our own reality beyond the kind of like you know, surface level manifestation stuff that you find on YouTube. And ultimately, our our biggest masterpiece is the legacy that we leave behind in the way that we live. Um, and so this entire exhibition was a kind of a way of reminding people of that because if they can experience what 1,000 different examples of energetic signatures made, you know, invisible, made visible, then that has an impact in the way that they see things. And I also made each piece ridiculously affordable because I wanted people to take them away practically because I don't have stories, um, but also to serve as a little kind of like a memento of whatever it is that they experienced when they were in that gallery surrounded by all of these different pieces. Um, whereas my next exhibition will still be exploring energetic signatures, but there won't be a hundred pieces, a thousand pieces, there will be 13 um very specific signatures that I want to kind of dive deep into as a result of this 1,000 piece exploration. And they will be priced very, very different differently, you know, from instead of it being a small piece for 19 pounds, it will be a large piece for 25,000 minimum because it's a different intention, it's a different piece of work. Um, so I don't even really limit myself in terms of the way that I price things, I kind of like explore the whole spectrum of what it what it means and looks like to make and sell the art. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01: 13:47

Yes, yes, yes, yes, and so you create collections and then you show them and then people purchase them.

SPEAKER_00: 13:58

That's what we mean in traditional, kind of like a very dumbed-down, very Jordan much, and you know, like showing them usually like traditionally you'd show in an exhibition. Um, I'm not represented by a gallery, I don't particularly want to be unless I it's someone, unless it's a gallery owned by somebody that I have a very specific and intentional relationship with. Um, because I think you know, 2025 artists have more access to the tools and the knowledge and the education that they need more than ever to self-represent. Um, and you see that even in like literature, you know, there are more and more um authors who are quite reputable self-publishing. So I'm not particularly interested in being represented by a gallery, although that's one traditional way of doing it. Um and I like to do things offline when it comes to my art. Obviously, I still kind of talk about it in my online spaces, but this is something that I really like to build local communities around. Um, because that's another one of my values. Um, and you know, and I think more and more as we enter a new age where AI is gonna be as ordinary as a smartphone, I think we're gonna be craving a different level of intimacy and energy exchange in the offline world, and I want to start creating that so that when when the need arises, it's available.

SPEAKER_01: 15:33

Yes, um, yeah, uh AI is already everywhere, and um it's kind of like I mean, we've seen this in history before, right? People were washing their clothes at the river, the washing machine was invented, and now we have a loneliness crisis. Well, why, yeah, yeah, why yes, so like in every evolution of technology, right? We had the radio and then TV came in and killed the radio, and then and then things are different, right? Because we lose something in each one of those progressions, right? Like with the laundry thing, that was women's community time. Everybody would get together at the same time, they would hang out together, they would go wash the clothes together, they would talk about what was going on. So and so is sick. Oh, you know, the remedy, oh, go see this person, and then the washing machine was invented, and now people didn't have to do that anymore, and so they stayed at home. And so I think it's so smart to also think about as AI is coming in and it's getting added to the freaking washing machines now. Like, I don't need a I don't need AI to look at my washing machine. Thank you. Um, but it is, it's getting put everywhere, and so we're like, where is the human element? How can we serve humans? How can we use these tools to the best, but then also create more human human stuff, right? Community, more connection, more ways of bringing people together, right? Because we I don't know, there's just AI can do so much, but there's so much that it can't do, um that we have to do, right?

SPEAKER_00: 17:24

That's right, and I think that is also where the the role of artists really comes into play, because if if the way that you see yourself as an artist is that I paint stuff and so that people can have stuff on their walls, so that their walls aren't empty and their houses aren't so sad. At some point in history, that was a fair, a fair like kind of pain point and a fair service that you're offering other human beings. But now, you know, somebody like some Pinterest nerd like me can just could just, you know, okay, I've decided that this is what the interior of my house is going to look like, and I need some art on the wall so that it's not so sad, and then they that person can just go and generate something um using I don't know, whatever the tools are, even chat GPT, print it off, and then that's kind of that. And they would have even experienced a level of satisfaction in doing that because they're creating it themselves. Um, and so where does that put you? It displaces you completely as an artist, but when you see yourself as a leader in the consciousness of evolution, then you're kind of your lens becomes much bigger and my much wider because you're looking at society as a whole and how it's evolving, and you're really looking at who do I need to be to be in service of the commu my community that's built around shared values and a shared commitment and a shared stand, whatever that happens to be. And so, you know, and then your brand be essentially becomes a vessel for that leadership, and you know, and right now I know that sounds very vague, but that's partly because we really have no idea what's gonna happen with AI, everything is speculation. I have some pretty solid thoughts about what might happen. I created a whole masterclass about it, but you know, fundamentally it's like who who do I need to be and and keeping that inquiry alive as you lead yourself and as you lead your community that you're building through a world that you want to see, you know, and so that means protecting and maintaining the sacredness of the things that are human, if that's what matters to you as an artist, right? It's one of the things that really mattered to me, and you know, and part of what you know when I'm talking about doing things offline and building those communities, one of the things that we're missing are third spaces where we can just kind of like connect with people, like we no one even like finds a date at the bar anymore because the bar is no longer a third space, you know, like especially post-pandemics. There are all there are all of these things that are have already been replaced by digital versions of of itself, and that's before AI even came into existence. So we can't we you know it it would be unwise to blame the loss of these things to AI, and we really have to look like why we're not protecting these spaces. Part of that is because we didn't realize the value of them until we lost it, and now we kind of don't know how to go back. And that's the thing, we're not trying to go back, we're trying to go forward, and so we have to literally create and imagine the future that we want and create it from the present. That's truly what being an artist is, and that's what being a leader is. And you know, if you're a writer, you do that through your writing, if you're a musician, you do that through your concerts, if you're an artist, you do that through your exhibitions, whatever it happens to be. If you're interested in maintaining the humanity and the depth of humanity that it is who we are, then that's what you do, and you now have to lead, not just make stuff. Because AI is making all sorts of things.

SPEAKER_01: 21:16

Yes, yes, yes. And the world is starving for leadership, I think. Um, and it's something that I've been saying for a long time. Um, and I think it's more true now than ever. Um, and even when you look at the evolution as people, right? Like the next step of enlightenment, like once you've reached your enlightenment, the next step is helping other people. It always goes beyond you. It's like, what's the legacy? What's the uh you know, who else can you help? You know, like once you get it basically, it's kind of like once you get you have your oxygen mask on, can you look around and can you say, hey, look, let me untangle this for you, let me help you out. Um, and so yeah, reaching out and and I think those spaces, like you said, are so important. Um it's so interesting, yeah. Like like malls dying and and but there's also new things coming out of those. So like there's always something beautiful that could come out of that as well. Um, but what you were saying about creating your reality, and you mentioned it's way more than just like woo-woo manifesting stuff on YouTube, like you're talking straight up quantum physics. Um, so yes, I know I know what you mean. And I want to know now that we've kind of say that again.

SPEAKER_00: 22:44

I didn't want to say quantum physics, because I'm sure someone's gonna question me. And like I don't understand enough of quantum physics to like, you know, talk about it at any great length, but I understand enough about it to know that it's part of the it's you know, the study of consciousness in that realm is part of our future, and and and if anybody says that they 100% qu understand quantum physics, they don't.

SPEAKER_01: 23:12

No, no, no, definitely not, but you know, as we we can read about it, we can learn about it, and I think that a lot of the things that you're saying are exactly you know based on you based on the things I've read and the things I've seen. Um a great example that gives you kind of like a crash course. Um, have you read A Happy Pocket Full of Money? Yes, yeah, yeah. Okay, so that one is such a great one. And you think you're gonna, I don't know what I thought I was gonna be reading about, but it definitely wasn't. I didn't expect the whole first section to be about quantum physics and be like, oh wow, I teach this and I didn't even know. Um but yeah, like that's exactly what you're talking about, and is is the the the creating our own reality, and and yeah, we could do a deep dive, but it gets kind of it gets kind of trippy after a little while. Once you get deep enough into it.

SPEAKER_00: 24:13

The way that I navigate my ignorance of scientific words and concepts and ideas, because you know that's not my major, that's not what I study, that's not my field of expertise, and and even the people whose field of expertise it is don't see it as the field of expertise because it's so new and it's such new terrain. But the way that I navigate it is to understand the theory and understand what I'm being put presented as much as I can, and then really experience it, like apply it to my own thinking and my own experiencing and my own, you know, a kind of understanding of what's happening in my body, what's happening in my energetic field, what's happening, you know, when my dog's barking and it's reverberating around the house, and I'm trying to capture that as an energetic signature. What is going on in my system? And then, you know, and it was really through through these experiences as an artist, as a painter, that I'm like, oh, like it's like his box have like a certain frequency, and that's that's real. Frequencies are real. We know this about music and sounds, you know, that has a certain frequency, and it vibes with a certain frequency that's also in my energy field in a particular way, that kind of then creates this image that I have in my mind's eye that wasn't there before, so that's like an emergent quality of the these two things happening, and then there's like a painting that I then create, and you know, and and even the the kind of the doing of that changes the energy already, so it's like a kind of you know a best try capture, and then that has another emergent quality, and in it and if in that small interaction between me painting and the dog barking, all of these emergence can occur, then what the hell is happening moment by moment in the actual world, you know? So, from that experiential point of view, quantum physics makes a lot of sense, but if you ask me to explain it in like words, then like don't it's not gonna look very good.

SPEAKER_01: 26:22

No, no, no, because you kind of you kind of sound insane when you really try to get into the and you're trying to really understand it, you're trying to explain it to someone, and then you're trying, you know, you get halfway through it, you're like, no, I sound insane. Like this doesn't this doesn't compute. Um, I actually got a book. Oh my gosh, maybe I should read it one day. It's called Quantum Physics for Babies. And I bought it. I was like, I have to buy this because I just have to like one day I'm gonna have to explain. I don't know where it is right now. One day I'm gonna have to explain this to someone, and this book is gonna be perfect because it breaks it down into like you know, like a picture book, and it's like this is uh, you know, an atom. Um oh my god, I'm gonna find it and I'm gonna send you the the title, like you know, I'm gonna send you the picture of it. But yeah, yeah, please. Um speaking of this, you you have a way of helping people with their I guess um blocking their there, I guess in my world as a writer it's called writer's block, I guess artist block. So can you tell me a little bit about the gift that you mentioned that you have available for the audience?

SPEAKER_00: 27:36

Yeah, so it's a very simple this is a very simple thing. You sign up to it, and then you'll get a series of emails for the next 30 days, and each of those emails are journaling prompt that will guide you in going to the places of your energy field and your psyche and your identity and your being in such a way where you can identify where you have power leaks, where you have energy leaks and and blocks. Because a lot of the time people come to me and it's just like, oh, I used to love painting, or I used to love sculpting, I used to love doing this, but you know, that was like when I was 10, and you know, and I've basically just had a creative block since then, um, and you know, and I don't really know what to do about it. That's like one example, and then some another time somebody might come up to me and say, Okay, like look, I've been an established artist for a really long time. Um, I make ceramic bulbs and homeware, and it's all selling really well, but actually I'm just like templating everything, and I have not created anything new in about a year, and I just feel creatively blocked. Like, what do I do? What else is there other than mugs and bulbs? You know, and so I really kind of like combined all of my experience of having these conversations with people and what's helped them to create like a kind of like a self-paced guidance, um, you know, a guidebook, you might say, that then prompts you to do some journaling and some reflection in a really really deep way. So it is 30 days, which is a long thing for a freebie. And I'm not gonna lie, most people don't finish it, they drop off. But the of the I think 300 people who have downloaded this, I think maybe 10% of those people, so like between 20 to 30, have finished it, and they've all reached out to me, they've all had they've all wanted to find out how to work with me. And of those 20 30 people, at least 15 or 20 are either in my membership ship, have been a one to one client, or are in my branding programs. So, you know, this shit works if you follow through with it. If you don't, that's no judgment, and you can also Always restart it for a time that you're ready, or you're like, okay, I'm really just not gonna be able to do a 30-day thing. Let me just talk to you, then just talk to me. Because you know, 30 days on an email sequence, you know, it's not the most strategic for your freebie, but it's really very valuable. So I chose that over strategy.

SPEAKER_01: 30:22

I think it is very strategic. Um uh-huh. Yeah, because the one, you know, when you sign up for it and you get through it, the numbers are there. The people, the people are like, hey, yes, I love this. This worked for me. Let's work together. So I think it's super strategic, and it's so much better than a generic get this PDF with information you can find on YouTube, yay, you know. Um, so I commend you for that. So that actually sounds like a lot, um, a lot of fun, and it sounds like it's actually useful to your audience. So I commend you for that. Um, you know, for doing, you know, giving a freebie that is actually gonna help them do what you want them to do, right? Um, so that is fantastic. So take the advice, make sure you go check out um Rafi's freebie, but take note also of how specific and effective this is for her audience. So if you're listening and you've been wondering, what should I do as a freebie? Do something that is actually going to be helpful to them, even if it's not traditional or ordinary, because it works, it's converting people. So there you go. That is fantastic. Um, all right. So usually we finish off our episodes with one final tip. So if someone wants to be an artist, they're like, oh my god, I have always wanted to show my art and have come people buy it, or I've always wanted to sing, I've always wanted to do this. Like, what is your best advice for helping people find that inner artist?

SPEAKER_00: 32:05

Know who you are and radically accept whoever that is, and then surround yourself with people who get you, and those people might not necessarily be the family that you grew up with or the friends that you grew up with, not because they don't love you, but because you can't make people get you. But it is your responsibility to surround yourself with people who do, because to be seen and to be gotten is a human requirement, and part of taking responsibility for that is doing the work for you to know who you are.

SPEAKER_01: 32:47

Yes, if not, you'll you'll just be the stories, and everyone else is projecting onto you, right? You'll be the version of them, and so you have to take control of that story, and like you said, go find your people, and and then you'll come back, and then you'll be like that, then you come back and they're like, Oh, that's so-and-so the artist, you know, where they might not have been able to see you because before it was like, Oh, it's so-and-so the server, and then you evolve, and then you become so-and-so the artist. I love that. Yeah, yes, that is fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Rafi. This has been such a great episode. Um, I really appreciate you being here with us today, and we will catch you guys next time on the next episode. Oh, you know what I didn't say? All the links will be available down in the show notes. And we will catch you guys next time on the next episode of Overcome Yourself the Podcast.

SPEAKER_00: 33:42

Bye. Thank you for having me. See you soon.

SPEAKER_01: 33:45

Thank you. Thank you guys for joining.

unknown: 33:48

Bye.

SPEAKER_01: 33:49

Oh, oh, oh, oh.